Designer Biography

Ellen Mary Rope

Born: 1855

Died:

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Although born in Blaxhall, near Woodbridge, Suffolk, Rope attended the Nottingham Place School, Marylebone, where she was taught drawing by the founder, philanthropist and social housing reformer Octavia Hill (1838-1912), a pupil of John Ruskin.  From here she returned to Suffolk to study at the Ipswich School of Art and from 1877 attended the Slade, where she studied sculpture and modeling under Professor Alphonse Legros.  On leaving in 1884 Rope worked as an illustrator and painter but continued to model in clay; until in 1885 the RA accepted three low relief terracotta’s including David playing before Saul. This was a turning point in her artistic career, gaining her important recognition as a sculptor.  A small notebook records her trip to Italy, and the prevailing influence of Italian Renaissance sculpture is apparent in her work.  From 1886 until the company’s closure in 1906 Rope became an important designer for the Della Robbia Pottery in Birkenhead, for whom she produced both plain and coloured relief works.  She exhibited from 1889 with the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, and as her status increased, so did the prestigious commissions from leading architects of the day, wishing to incorporate her work into their decorative schemes.  Amongst her most notable architectural commissions was the design of four spandrels to decorate the vestibule of the Women’s Building at the Chicago 1893 World Columbian Exposition; Faith, Hope, Charity and Heavenly Wisdom .